PETER L. WILSON an Architect in Love with Korca City and a Writer Inspired by Ismail Kadare

In conversation with Peter L. Wilson, Founding Partner of BOLLES+WILSON (bolles-wilson.com)

Peter Wilson with one of the Theatre Audience Masks made by the local Kolevica Pottery Studio

PHOTO by BOLLES+WILSON Masks by Vasillaq Kolevica

Born in Melbourne, Australia in 1950, Peter L. Wilson has dealt and is dealing with a series of projects in Albania. His company, based in Münster, Germany, bears the authorship of projects which are widely published and recognized with numerous awards, range from the design of offices to cultural facilities and shops, in search of a formal style that translates the building’s functional and typological requirements into creative invention.

Over the decades, it has tackled projects all over the world, in Europe, Lebanon, Japan, Korea and Australia, where it has established close and important

relationships with local collaborators and consultants. The firm’s projects in the Münsterland area are noteworthy and continuous.

Wilson has taught at several universities as a visiting professor: at the Kunsthochschule Weißensee in Berlin (1994-1996), at the Academy of Architecture in Mendrisio, Switzerland, (2006-2008) and at the Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (2013-2014).

In this exclusive interview, we talk with Mr. Wilson over his first contact with Albania and his first project in this country but also his current projects while we are intrigued

The Square of the Blue House, Korca

PHOTO by BOLLES+WILSON

by his book– “Some Reasons for Travelling to Albania.”

Mr. Wilson, what was your first contact with Albania and Albanian architecture? What impressed you most?

My first contact with Albania was as one of the three international architects to be selected by the then Tirana Mayor to take part in the competition for a Masterplan for Tirana’s Central Axis. On arriving we were first impressed by the Painted Facade strategy of Edi Rama. This was a radical and poetic way to bring the appearance of the city to public attention. A strategy beyond

the imaginative possibilities of a normal politician but quite within the range of an artist/mayor. It also at that time put Tirana on the global horizon.

I was also impressed by urban blocks in Tirana without internal roads - something we in Europe would like to achieve (now of course a lot more roads have been constructed in Tirana).

How did it start your first cooperation in Albania? When you look back at this journey, what do you remember?

Our first co-operation was not the

New City Library Korca

PHOTO by Roman Mensing. In cooperation with Vitru+Architects, Tirana, Albania

masterplan, the French team won. But the Mayor called us back to advise on a series of projects by local architects. The first was what we referred to as the Polychromink Tower, next to the stadium. Our task was to rework the facades (coloured louvers) and to rationalise the building form. This was the first of a series of hand-holding projects where our feedback was sometimes only partially accepted by the local authors. It reminded me of my long years teaching at London’s Architectural Association. Later we were asked to contribute to the painted facade program, only to discover that the strong Albanian sun fades colours over the years. We were much more comfortable when we won the international competition for the historic centre of Korca. There we have been able to make permanent physical adjustments to the urban morphology.

Can you tell us about the current projects in Albania?

Our current projects in Albania include a Regional Development Strategy in the region of Korca, the lakefronts in Pogradec

and Pustec (with the ADF). Also the gold facade of the new Tirana International Hotel for Mr Ram Geci. We are also working on a large-scale housing project called `Bazaar Gate´ in Tirana as well as on-going acupuncture interventions in Korca. Recently finished are the new headquarters of the Albanian Football Association in Tirana and the stadium in Shkodra.

“Some reason for travelling to Albania” - Why did you write a book on Albania?

My book `Some Reasons for Travelling to Albania´ is a follow-up to an earlier book called `Some Reasons for Travelling to Italy´ - this researched the long list of Grand Tourists in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as well as contemporary cultural figures like the architects Le Corbusier or Robert Venturi who all went to Italy. I am very fond of the anecdotal format of short episodes, this I re-activated to give background to my own reasons for travelling to Albania (and I have many, mostly projects). The book is in the end a documentation of how Albania came into focus on the consciousness of the rest of Europe, through visits by people like Edith Durham or Lord Byron (who was a guest of Ali Pasha).

It was also necessary for me to scan Albanian history from Illyrians to the various Italian plans for Tirana, to the period of King Zog. I was all the time inspired by the many and profound Ismail Kadare books I had read.

Please elucidate how you established BOLLES + WILSON and what are its approaches? In your view, what makes your projects so special?

Peter Wilson on site in Korca - demonstrating how to make the Theatre Tragic Mask.

Photo by BOLLES+WILSON

The office of BOLLES+WILSON is based in Münster in Germany, it was here that we built our first major public building - the City Library (which for more than thirty years has ranked as one of the top libraries in Germany). My wife and partner Professor Julia Bolles-Wilson is German and as to be expected highly rational in her architectural methodology. I as an Anglo-Saxon am more on the intuitive/empirical side, more spontaneous and less rule bound - I make it up as I go along. This combination is the basis of our somewhat phenomenological philosophy, also our ambition to engender spaces that are for the user comfortable to be in. Our office originated in London where I was teaching at the avant-guarde Architectural Association, alongside Rem Koolhaas and Zaha Hadid. But in London young architects only get small commissions, shops or houses, hence our move to Germany. Along the way we built a house in Tokyo and a theatre in Rotterdam.

Polychromic Tower, hand drawn design concept by Peter Wilson

What are the latest innovative tools your firm is using to facilitate the smooth realization of various projects?

Your question about innovative tools sounds like you want a parametric answer, or at least to know that we are high-tech. and use BIM. But no - my tool of preference remains the pencil, in my own case a very radical, very hard 5H, with it one can achieve a German degree of exactitude. Although photo-realistic Renderings (called ‘Renders’ in an incorrect use of English grammar) are preferred in Albania we are counter-cyclical in our choice of tools. In fact, now that a generation of digital natives has entered the architectural discourse the hand drawn has the exotic status of an almost lost art (I often refer to myself as a dinosaur, one who survived a phase

New Tirana International Hotel with gold facade

change, the transition to the digital). My hand drawings have a positive resonance with clients who are suspicious of digital `Bling´ (eye-candy) and appreciate seeing the product of the authorial hand. My drawings are also collected by museums and other academic collections (V+A London, Drawing Matter, CCA, Tschoban collection-Berlin, AA Archives) and researched by academic scholars (google - JoA Peter Wilson).

We also have another tool of preference, this is the young Albanian office of `Vitru,´ with whom we happily and successfully collaborate.

You are a “fan” of Small buildings and the Libraries. Can you tell us more about your approach towards them?

Small buildings and Libraries. The second because we have built so many of them, including Korca´s and most recently the National Library of Luxembourg (BnL). And small buildings because they are like

Icon Museum in Korca

PHOTO by Roman Mensing. In cooperation with DEA Studio, Tirana, Albania.

theatre characters on the urban stage. The smallish building is ideal for our theory of acupuncture, putting small pins in the body of the city to enhance the existing urban choreography. Our small buildings are a respectful way of upgrading the embedded and inherited character of a particular place (a symbiosis of old and new).

CONTACT:

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Korca Theatre Restructuring Facade with Comic, Tragic and Audience

Masks PHOTO by Roman Mensing. In cooperation with DEA STUDIO, Tirana, Albania